Homelessness in Galway During the Covid-19 Crisis

Covid-19 Column

By Darren Casserly

They say variety is the spice of life, well life has been very bland lately. That is the worst thing about lockdown, there is no variety in what I am doing every day. Like most people, I wake up in the morning, I go to my desk and spend eight hours in front of my laptop. The only variety I have in my life these days is my evening walk and I’ve already covered every blade of grass within my five-kilometre radius.

The worst part about it all is being stuck at home all the time. At the start of this pandemic it was fine, I didn’t have to get up as early for lectures I saved money on bus fares and I was home before eight. Now I’d give anything to go to a nine o’clock lecture on a Friday morning. I’ve walked around the empty campus a few times in the past year and it really got me thinking what it will be like if we are allowed back on campus next year. Even the worst parts of college are appealing to me at this stage, give me six lectures in a row if it meant I never have to think about Zoom again.

I have been lucky enough that I have been on work placement for the year and not to have been subjected to any Zoom breakout rooms which I’m told are the worst part of college this year. The isolation I’m sure has been the hardest aspect of this for most people, especially if you’re living at home. People are not supposed to only talk to four people for an entire year, surely that cannot be good.

The one-year anniversary tweets that I have been seeing on Twitter have annoyed me more than I thought they would, just thinking that an entire year has been lost to this. It has been both the longest and shortest year of my life. Maybe that’s because it has been a year where nothing happened and also it’s been that long since I’ve truly been happy. It’s a depressing thought but I’m sure other people have felt that to some extent.

No one at this time last year thought that we’d be in this position in a years’ time with our best hope of getting out of it is asking Joe Biden for vaccines on a Paddy’s Day Zoom call. It really just goes to show in times like these that all you can do is laugh.

Homelessness in Galway During the Covid-19 Crisis

By Andrew Florio

Over the past year we have become acutely aware of the vulnerability that many in our society are faced with. The elderly and sick have been at the top of the list to protect, prompting global lockdowns. However, also sitting in that category are the homeless. An already marginalised faction, they have long been on the edge of our collective psyche. For all its gloom, 2020 was a year where the homeless and the necessity for action on their part finally became a priority, spurring changes and immediate action from Leo Varadkar’s government. In 2019 the homelessness situation in Galway was described by the Simon Community as the worst since its foundation over 40 years ago. This is reflective of the rental hikes in the private housing sector. Measures were put in place last year to protect those at risk of eviction. These include a rent freeze and a moratorium on evictions in March. This meant there was a temporary block to homelessness and, for the first time in a while, there were more people exiting emergency accommodation than entering.

Spurred on by increased awareness of the disastrous outcomes if Covid-19 was to spread to the homeless shelters, a drive was ignited to provide independent housing and additional supports to the homeless and those at risk of homelessness. The pandemic facilitated a momentum swing in the fight against the crisis and the falling numbers of those in emergency accommodation in 2020 suggested a new wave of optimism.

Meaghan Hynes, a communication and advocacy officer for the Galway Simon Community, explains that it was thanks to inter-agency work that many of these positive outcomes were achieved, a lot of which are still seen today.

Meaghan says, “last year there was a lot of collaborative work between ourselves, the local authorities, and other agencies as well. It was an inter-agency collaboration, and everything happened very quickly. So, when the pandemic began, all our resources were pooled together to ensure people weren’t sleeping rough on the streets or that the addiction and homeless services were able to adhere to social distancing guidelines.”

The Simon Community have eleven full-time rooms and some crash beds in their emergency service in which Covid19 would spread like wildfire were it to enter. Much of the work done to try and minimise the risk of infection was done by moving those in emergency accommodation into houses that posed less of a risk to their health.

This was a short-term strategy that successfully moved many out of emergency accommodation. However, as Meaghan adds, the reduction doesn’t reflect the number of people accessing Simon’s services in Galway, which remained at a sustained level, “While there was a decrease in emergency accommodation, we didn’t experience a decrease in our services.”

In addition to that, the January report on the number of people accessing such services saw a rise in the number of adults seeking shelter. Although relatively small, the jump from 209 in December to 220 in January shows an upward trend that could suggest an unwinding of the progress made last year.

There is still hope, however, as much of the work done between charities and agencies has continued into 2021. Meaghan says, “There still is a lot of collaborative work going on, maybe not at the same pace but we still work interagency. We work quite closely with other services in Galway and the west to make sure we can provide a holistic support to our clients. So, while it’s not at the same pace as it was at the beginning of the pandemic, it’s still there and we definitely have built on that and brought it forward into this year as well.”

With the eviction ban and rent freeze set to end in tandem with the lockdown next month, it’s a worrying time for those on the verge of homelessness. Last year’s combined effort is a glimpse at what can be done when teamwork is used to chase a single goal. The effect has been positive but how long can that be sustained? There is still much to do to and, with the looming economic fallout of successive lockdowns coming up, the fight against homelessness in Galway is far from over.

NUIG Students Offer Their Study Motivation Tips

By Tom Molloy

It’s hard to find the motivation to do anything sometimes. Studying is the one thing students are supposed to do yet it’s the last thing a lot of students want to do. Throw in a global pandemic, everyone being forced to work from home, and all seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer now streaming on Disney+ and you’d wonder how anyone gets anything done at all.

According to an article in last December’s Frontiers in Psychology, researchers explained that “despite the efforts of teachers and parents to mitigate the effects of the Covid-19 restrictive measures on students, our results showed a decrease in students’ academic motivation.” This will come as a surprise to absolutely nobody. SIN found some very helpful students who told us what motivates them to study during lockdown.

Most of the students SIN spoke to admitted finding it difficult. Final year arts student Esther Greenfield finds motivating herself to study particularly tough, “Every essay is a battle and fight to the death. I need an hour of comfort TV to recover after every paragraph.”

Gráinne Thornton had a slightly more positive outlook and stressed the importance of sticking to a routine, “I find having a set time to get up and set time for studying really helpful. The routine helps me find a balance of work and free time so I can actually do things I enjoy in the evenings without feeling bad that I’m not doing enough study.”

Of course, there are plenty of our students doing work placement this semester across a variety of different fields. SIN asked one such student, Darren Casserly, where he finds motivation at this time. Darren pointed out the difference between working on placement and academic study, “I suppose the motivation for me is that I’ve got deadlines that I’ve got to meet and other people are relying on me to do the work as opposed to doing everything for myself like in college.” Fellow intern Valerie McHugh feels that it’s important to be constantly aware of your attention span, “If I’m struggling to find motivation, or if my attention span is slipping, I do 20 minutes work and then have a 10-minute break and repeat it. It keeps me moving.”

Darragh Nolan offered some particularly helpful tips to SIN based on his own experience, “the main thing I found helpful was just staying organised, making a to-do list every day and dividing things up into small tasks to make it more manageable.”

Darragh was keen to point out the importance of staying on top of the workload, “it’s so easy to get lost in the shuffle of things and then suddenly you’re staring at a mountain of assignments.” One of the best pieces of advice Darragh has received in terms of procrastination is that you should be honest with yourself about what work you’re going to do that day, “Doing something you enjoy while you’re thinking about studying just makes us feel guilty and isn’t really relaxing, so you might as well either decide to study or decide to relax. As long as you get the work done at some stage!”

Don’t be hard on yourself if you’re finding it tough to be motivated some days. We can all afford to be a little easier on ourselves. As we are constantly reminded by the University, we are in perpetual “unprecedented times.” First and foremost, look after yourself and try to incorporate some of these tips into your routine.